Former Kinetic Concepts Inc. CEO Catherine Burzik has joined forces with a local venture capital firm to raise $50 million for biomedical and biotechnology start-ups, mostly in the San Antonio area.

The fund is the second one put together by Incyte Ventures, which invests in life sciences startups in San Antonio.

“There's always a willingness to try to raise money in San Antonio to make San Antonio better, and there's a natural bias towards the medical community,” Burzik said. “I feel that if we have a good story — and I think we have a good story from the successes that we've had — we will be able to raise the money.”

She and Incyte plan to start raising the money in the second quarter of this year. She said they expect to raise the capital within a year and that they believe that most of the money will come from Texas investors.

Incyte raised $12 million over the course of a year — in the midst of the financial meltdown in 2008 and 2009 — for its first fund, said managing partner Paul Castella.

He said Incyte invested about 80 percent of the first fund's money in companies in the area.

Burzik “brings a lot of unique attributes that will definitely help us distinguish the second fund,” Castella said.

Burzik announced that she was leaving KCI in December 2011, about six months after the medical-devices company agreed to be acquired by London-based private equity firm Apex Partners for $6.1 billion.

“Since that time, I've gotten involved with a number of local companies — impressive, young, local companies,” Burzik said. “I just decided after we went through that buyout that I really wanted to go out and try some other things, and that's what I'm doing.”

That includes taking on advisory roles at several biotech and biomedical startups in San Antonio. One of the firms works with stem cells from umbilical cords, and another is using sandalwood oil to dissolve warts caused by the human papillomavirus on young children.

“I've enjoyed discovering the technology, and I've particularly enjoyed building the management teams at all of these companies,” Burzik said.

She's also chairwoman of the board of Vitapath Genetics Inc, which is developing genome-based testing to determine if vitamin therapies can help individuals avoid illness. In addition, she's a board member of Becton, Dickinson and Co.

“When you're a CEO of a big company ... you have a million demands on your time, 24 hours a day,” she added. “The good news out of all this is that I could really sit back and be selective and try to figure out where I do want to spend my time and energy.”